The Art of Marriage

I recently read through the majority opinion and the dissenting opinions for Obergefell v. Hodges. Most people know this decision as the one that legalized same-sex marriage at a federal level. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d highly recommend doing so. Scattered throughout the legal arguments is an underlying emphasis on how important marriage is. Here are some quotes that really highlighted that importance:

• “Its dynamic allows two people to find a life that could not be found alone, for a marriage becomes greater than just the two persons. Rising from the most basic human needs, marriage is essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations.“
• “The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.”
• “Marriage also affords the permanency and stability important to children’s best interests.”
• “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.“

Beyond the words written by the justices of that court, there are also numerous quotes from previous court opinions. Here are some of those:

• “Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.” – Griswold v. Connecticut
• “[T]he foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”  – Maynard v. Hill
• “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man’” – Loving v. Virginia

Marriages are falling apart because of poverty and ignorance. People don’t get married because they can’t afford to (look into loss of benefits after marriage) and because they don’t understand why it’s important. People get divorced because of infidelity, domestic abuse, substance abuse, and not being able to talk. This causes harmful disruption in the lives of any children involved.

If the government professes to value marriage so strongly, then why isn’t it doing more to protect marriage from these threats?

Link to Obergefell v. Hodges ruling
PBS “Why Are Fewer People Getting Married?”
Institute for Family Studies “Reasons People Give for Divorce”

            I am a child of divorce. My mother and father separated when I was 4. A few months later, we moved to a city 4 hours away. My mother went from being a stay-at-home mom to being a single mother of five children who were all dealing with different levels of trauma. It was a mix of things. For my older siblings, they had to deal with losing all of their friends and moving to a new school. All of us were adjusting to the loss of a father. We lost the stability of our family and our home. I remember moving just about every other year until I was 18. Hardest of all, my sisters and I were dealing with the trauma of our sexual abuse at the hands of our father.

            Was it hard to handle the effects of the divorce? Yes! Poverty is hard. Lack of stability is hard. Loss of a parent is hard. Lack of time with the remaining parent is hard. Was it worth it? Again, yes!

            For our family, divorce was the best option. Because we all knew that, the adjustment was a little easier. The stability lost from having two parents and a stable housing situation was mitigated by being together. That period of my life is why I am so convinced about the importance of siblings. However, we’ll get into that at a much later time. For now, divorce.

            Children need stability. The more aspects of their lives that they can rely on, the more secure they feel. This leads to all kinds of positive benefits in the future. When that is taken away from them, those benefits are replaced with negative outcomes. Some things are out of our control, like the death of a family member or the loss of employment. Let’s focus on one of the things that is in our control: the stability of our own marriages.

            Numerous studies have shown that kids of divorced parents fare worse across the board than do children of continuously married parents. Bruce Kieth and Paul Amato performed a meta-analysis of these studies to try to identify just how much children are affected by divorce. They found the effects of parental divorce to be modest rather than strong (as many studies had suggested). However, they believe that this is due to the wide variety of experiences that the children have. Some children of divorced parents do extremely well. Some children of continuously married parents probably would have done better if their parents had divorced. I expect my and my siblings’ outcomes would have been drastically worse if my parents hadn’t divorced.

            So what? Divorce is bad for kids, but sometimes it’s good for kids? What do we do with that kind of information? We try to minimize bad divorce and maximize good divorce. If there is no abuse and a couple is low-conflict, they should stay together for the kids. They should also go to marriage counseling to try to make the best of their marriage. Making counseling normal and accessible is key. Educating couples before marriage is even more important (an ounce of prevention…)

            Just as important, parents need to be taught what is and is not acceptable within a relationship and a family. When there is any kind of abuse, when parents have a high-conflict marriage, divorce can be best for the kids.

Here’s a list of sources and further reading:
State of our Unions 2019
State of our Unions 2012
The impact of family formation change on the cognitive, social, and emotional well-being of the next generation.

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I am a 26-year-old Marriage and Family Studies major at Brigham Young University – Idaho.

I am the youngest of five children. My mother and father were high school sweethearts who married when they were 19. They divorced after my father was arrested for abusing my sisters and me. I was raised in a single-parent home from age 4 to age 13, when my mother remarried.

Her second marriage was devoid of abuse, but it was not easy. She and her husband were in marriage counseling for the majority of their marriage, which ended when he passed away after ten years of marriage. Despite the rockiness of the marriage, their last few years together were happy. They were each other’s best friend.

Three of my older siblings are married. They are all much happier with their spouses than my mother seemed to be with hers. I guess they learned from her mistakes?

I have been married for 4 years now. My husband and I met in high school and had some rocky dating years. However, we’re smoothing out the rough edges in our relationship. A little bit of that smoothing out comes from trial and error, but more and more is coming from what I’m learning as a student.